330 pages ; 24 cm

Early communal efforts in public health were aimed at regulating food and water supplies, providing for the proper disposal of human wastes, and preventing the spread of epidemic diseases by quarantine methods. Duffy identifies the first significant American development as the appearance of temporary boards of health during a series of major yellow fever attacks in East Coast cities between 1793 and 1806. The growth of urban centers in the second half of the nineteenth century led to the establishment of permanent health agencies as a means of coping with increasing health and sanitary problems. With the discovery of the role of bacteria, Duffy writes, public health departments moved to virtually eliminate major contagious diseases in the first half of the twentieth century, gradually shifting their focus from sanitation and infection to organic disorders, environmental conditions, and other problems inherent to advanced industrial societies. -- Publisher

Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-322) and index

The early years -- The years of growth and expansion -- The appearance of Health Boards -- From paternalism to rugged individualism -- The early sanitary movement -- The impact of Asiatic Cholera -- The sanitary reformers -- Public health and the Civil War -- The institutionalization of public health -- The growth of municipal and state boards of health -- Hospitals and the Federal government's role in pubic health -- Health and sanitation at the close of the nineteenth century -- Bacteriology revolutionizes public health -- The new public health -- State Health Boards and the early rural health movement -- The Federal government and heath reform -- The Great Depression and the war years -- The postwar years -- Public health in a changing world

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